


Nothing left to hide (I’m all in for life)

by ohmypreciousgirl



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Asexual Awareness Week, Asexual Awareness Week 2015, Asexual Character, Asexuality Spectrum, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6288718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmypreciousgirl/pseuds/ohmypreciousgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oliver told Felicity once he wanted to figure out the kind of person he was outside of his life in Starling City and vigilantism. Maybe he was now someone that dared to admit out loud about an intrinsic part of who he was that he never had shared with anyone else. And if he couldn’t share that with the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, then who could he?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing left to hide (I’m all in for life)

**Author's Note:**

> In celebration of [Asexual](http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Asexuality) Awareness [Week](http://fuckyeahasexual.tumblr.com/post/131559363070/sootzy-heres-a-cover-photo-and-a-general) last year, I finally wrote down one of my fave headcanons for Oliver. I tried my best to explain how being asexual aligns with his canon characterization and actions, but I’m not sure I covered everything I wanted, so there’s a chance I’ll explore this with a follow-up from Felicity’s POV. It’ll only depend of the response to this particular piece, to be honest.
> 
> Special thanks to awriterincowboyboots for being the one to inspire me to write this and helping out along the way, yellowflicker09011996 for being my biggest cheerleader and that meta I read once that explained how Oliver could be read as asexual/demisexual. Also, thanks to every Stucky fic writer that portrayed one of them as asexual cause it gave me courage to try my hand at this. Last, but no less important, FanMomMer, for doing an awesome job as my beta ♥ You're the best, girl :)
> 
> One last thing, tho. You need to keep in mind the asexual community is incredible diverse and each asexual experiences relationships, attraction and arousal differently. The one portrayed here can be identified as [Gray-A](http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Grey-A)and it isn’t the only type of experience out there. Actually, there’s a [big ace umbrella](http://www.asexualityarchive.com/under-the-ace-umbrella/) and you should read about it.
> 
> Title based on ‘All in’ by Lifehouse.
> 
> Have a good time reading this new story! **Don't forget to leave me a review with your thoughts/excitement/just acknowledge if you enjoyed this story. I appreciate all the comments! They feed my soul!**

Oliver was lying on his back on their brand new sofa with Felicity laying on top of him, his knuckles caressing her back and sides aimlessly. Scattered around the room were piles of boxes filled with personal items they’d acquired along their travels. Amidst those were things they’d asked Thea to ship to their new address along with brand new furniture they needed to assemble for their new home.  
  
Basically, they had a lot of things to unpack and organize that would take at least the whole week so it was a good thing neither he nor Felicity worked.  
  
“We need to go upstairs to tidy up our bedroom so we have a comfortable place to sleep,” Felicity said with a muffled voice.  
  
A whine escaped his lips. “Fine, but this is the last thing we will do today.”  
  
“Hell yes, I think my legs will give up on me if I try anything else,” Felicity agreed as she pushed herself off him.  
  
“Your legs? What about my back?! No amount of training prepared me to move huge boxes all day.”  
  
Felicity rolled her eyes, offering him a helping hand to get up. Without breaking the hold, they slowly made their way towards the bedroom.  
  
For the suburban house they’d picked, their bedroom was relatively small but they had a walk-in closet and an adjacent door which led to the bathroom. For furniture, they’d chosen a king sized bed, a tall, dark wood cabinet and a nightstand. The only thing assembled was the bed, everything else was packed in boxes and would remain there till the next day. Right then, they just needed to set the heavy mattress and box spring on the bed frame and put on the bed linens.    
  
“Let’s play a game,” Felicity suggested, roaming around the room to get all their suitcases on the same side.  
  
Oliver smiled. “Sure,” he agreed as he ripped-off the plastic covering the new mattress. “Twenty questions?”  
  
During their trips, Felicity and he had fallen into a habit of playing teen games to pass time and get to know the trivial things about each other that their three years of friendship didn’t cover. Although sometimes it led to serious conversations, most of time it’d ended up with them giggling and kissing like a pair of teenagers in their first relationship.  
  
“I go first!” Felicity determined. “Your favorite band during your late teens?”  
  
“Fall Out Boy,” he replied with a sheepish grin.  
  
“Oh, my God,” Felicity laughed, throwing her head back in delight. “I wouldn’t have guessed that one. Well, at least they were cool.”  
  
“You think?” Oliver blinked, surprised. His love for the band back then was a source of teasing among his friends. He thought Felicity would make fun of him too, but of course she’d think differently.  
  
Of course.  
  
“Yeah,” she nodded. “You gotta love their style, although I prefer their new stuff.”  
  
“They’re still together?” he asked conversely as he lifted the mattress to fit on the bed frame while Felicity supervised.  
  
“Yes, they released two albums in the last couple of years,” she looked over at him, offering a smile. “When I find my iPod, we can listen to it together.”  
  
Oliver beamed at her. “I’d love that. Talking about music, a meaningful song to you and why?”  
  
Making a pensive expression, Felicity took a couple of seconds to answer. “I think ‘All I need’ by Within Temptation. It reminds me of my MIT days. I used to play that song so many times because I was in love with the singer’s voice.”  
  
Seeing the blank stare on Oliver’s face, Felicity giggled. “You’ve no idea who they are, do you?”  
  
“Absolutely no clue,” he admitted with a laugh, turning his back to her to bend down and open the box labeled bed linens that rested on the foot of the bed.  
  
“Such a frat boy,” she teased. “Okay, talking about our young days, tell me the name of the girl responsible for your sexual awakening?”  
  
Oliver felt his whole body tense up at her question, freezing on the spot. His first instinct was to outright lie, but he knew Felicity would see right through it and he loathed the idea of keeping secrets from her, even if it was a harmless one. Well, at least compared to everything he did during his five years away, his feelings toward sex and anything related to it was very low on a scale of ‘Important Things About Oliver Queen’.  
  
The thing was that nobody knew was that for the entirety of his teenage years he’d spent most of his time trying to fix what he believed was broken within himself until it didn’t matter anymore and it was just another aspect of him that was…damaged.  
  
The only memory he had about thinking of a woman as ‘hot’ was when he was 16 and realized he wasn’t anymore interested in sex then that when he was 13. At that age, the idea of sex had been so foreign to him that he was weirded out when suddenly his whole class was obsessed with sex. He remembered voicing out this problem to his mother and she had told him he was a late bloomer, but soon enough Oliver would be the same too because ‘that’s what boys do’.  
  
Except she had been wrong and he never grew into it.    
  
He never felt any spark of arousal when he faced the sexualised images that his friends showed him. He never became turned on when they discussed in front of him what they’d do if they had the opportunity to fuck the head cheerleader who only slept with older dudes.  
  
Oliver never experienced what the other boys went through and, for a long time, it settled wrong with him.  
  
“Oliver?” Felicity touched his arm, making him stand upright, wincing slightly at the unexpected touch. God, he was so inside his own head, he didn’t even hear her moving around to get to him.  
  
“Is everything alright?” she asked, concern showing in her face at his unexpected reaction. She knew when he became unexpectedly quiet it often meant he’d gone to a bad place in his mind for a second.  
  
He opened his mouth to reassure her everything was fine, nothing to worry about, but she was already trying to coax information from him. “What happened to her?”  
  
For a moment, Oliver wanted to laugh. Felicity had gotten so used to his long list of personal tragedies she was already expecting something bad to have happened to the hypothetical girl he had noticed when he was younger.  
  
She had no idea.  
  
Taking a deep breath, Oliver knew he had two options: make up a story about it or tell Felicity the truth. The former was pointless because Felicity would know he was inventing a tale to cover the real story and the latter was…terrifying.  
  
He had no idea how Felicity would take the news. Logically, he understood she wouldn’t judge him for keeping his lack of sexual attraction a secret. She’d be supportive and kind because that was who Felicity was. He just didn’t know if she’d think that there was something wrong with him.  
  
Although, she’d already accepted so many parts of him that were broken or unfit for the rest of the world, what would be one more?  
  
He told her once he wanted to figure out the kind of person he was outside of his life in Starling City and vigilantism. Maybe he was now someone that dared to admit out loud about an intrinsic part of who he was that he never had shared with anyone else. And if he couldn’t share that with the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, then who could he?  
  
Gathering all the courage he had, Oliver confessed. “I never had that,” he cleared his throat awkwardly. “Sexual awakening, I mean.”  
  
“Come again?” Felicity asked, blinking fast and brows furrowing as she tried to understand him.  
  
He straightened up, adjusting his posture to look at her. “I never cared about sex.”  
  
Felicity tilted her head, her confusion evident. “Oliver,” she started taking his hands into hers and pushing him backwards until his knees touched the edge of the bed and he was sitting. “Why don’t you explain what you mean?”  
  
She sat beside him, putting their linked hands on her lap. He didn’t know if he was exuding an anxious energy that made Felicity try to ease him, but either way it was working. “Because I’m having trouble understanding what you’re trying to tell me.”  
  
“Okay,” he sighed, his eyes glued to their hands. He could feel Felicity’s eyes on him as he tried to gather his thoughts so he could make sense when he tried to explain what he meant.  
  
“When I entered puberty, every friend I had got obsessed with sex. It was everything they thought and talked about and I just didn’t understand it. Mom told me I’d eventually grow into it, but at 16 I realized I never felt any of those things my friends described, you know?”  
  
He finally had the courage to look at Felicity and her face was blank, showing no signal about what she was thinking. “What things?”  
  
“Things like curiosity to have sex or getting turned on by a nice looking women wearing tight clothes,” he paused briefly, considering how he could explain it. “Everything teenagers get excited about, I guess.”  
  
“Okay,” Felicity nodded. “When you were younger sex didn’t appeal to you, but that changed right?”  
  
Oliver controlled himself enough to not flinch under her gaze. “Not exactly,” he replied hesitantly.  
  
Felicity’s eyes widened in shock, her grip in his hand tightening. “Oliver, please, tell me you haven’t had sex multiple times without wanting to.”  
  
He shook his head vehemently, squeezing her hand once to reassure her. “It’s not like that, I swear.”  
  
“So, please,” her tone pleading. “Tell me how it is.”  
  
Oliver licked his lips and slipped out one of his hands from Felicity’s to scratch the side of his beard. “It’s like this: I recognize a lot of women are aesthetically pretty, it doesn’t mean I want to have sex with them. I don’t experience sexual attraction, I don’t feel that pull to sleep with anyone. Sex feels nice, but…”  
  
Felicity shook her head. “You were known for sleeping around. Why would you do that?”  
  
This time Oliver couldn’t hold back his flinch. He hated what he’d done in his past, but if he was going to be honest with Felicity, she needed to hear everything. “I tried to fix it. I slept around because I tried to teach myself to like it. I needed to like sex because that was normal and everyone should. That was something that made men, men.”  
  
Outraged, Felicity’s went jaw slacked. “Sex made men, men? Who the hell told you that?”  
  
“My father, Felicity!” he said, forcefully.“‘Oliver, men have the urge for three things: power, success and sex,’” he mimicked his father’s tone. “I don’t know if you remember Felicity, but I was an academic failure and I didn’t want power because it was too much responsibility in my hands. And when I realized I also didn’t crave sex, I snapped. I decided I’d learn to want it and I tried, but I couldn’t. That was when I settled for pretending and it was so easy to fall into that role.  
  
“Because they thought of me as attractive, women showered me with attention. So, I let them. For a couple of years, I just went through the motions and I got good at sex. I learned how to please a woman, how to get me aroused for sex. And then, I got together with Laurel.”  
  
Felicity was looking at him with trembling lips and her eyes brimming with tears. His heart clenched in his chest. He had no idea if she was emotional over another chapter of his screwed up life or if she was upset because he had never told her this before, but he knew if he stopped to ask what she was thinking, he wouldn’t have the guts to finish it.  
  
“What about Laurel?” Felicity asked in a weak voice.  
  
“I liked her. It made things…better, I guess. I don’t know if I was sexually attracted to her, but for once in my life sex felt nice when I did it. Everything between me and Laurel never felt quite right, but it was better than other situations. So, I thought that maybe that was the missing connection, so I tried to find it.”    
  
“That was the reason you cheated on her so many times?” Felicity asked without any judgement in her tone.  
  
Oliver nodded. “I thought maybe if I found a better connection than the one I had with Laurel, sex wouldn’t be just nice, but as wonderful as everyone else described. So, I searched for it.”  
  
“What did you find?” she asked, hesitantly.  
  
“I found you,” he whispered, giving her a soft smile.  
  
She didn’t say anything back, just stared at him with eyes filled with sorrow and hurt. He took a deep breath, rubbing his eyes as way to distract of his emotional turmoil.  
  
“Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong, okay? Sex is not this terrible experience for me that I have to endure.”  
  
Except it was when he thought about his five years away, but he preferred not to share that part of his past with her. She didn’t need to know that during that time sex had become part of his skillset. Just another weapon he’d mastered to get what he’d needed from his targets. Obviously, he never used it to torture anyone - he’d never cross that line - but he had seduced information out of a large number of people using only his charm and looks, when it wasn’t for distraction. He’d hated doing it and when he’d first come back to Starling he’d promised himself he would never go there again. Obviously he broke that promise when he slept with Isabel Rochev, and his immediate regret at crossing that line again had multiplied after he found out she used to be his father’s mistress.  
  
“I just don’t need or understand the pull everyone else seems to experience,” Oliver continued. “I have sex with you because I’m in love with you. I like when we’re together because it’s the closest I feel to you. There’s no encounter between us I don’t enjoy. I may not crave it like you, but I feel thrilled when I’m able to satisfy your needs,” pausing briefly, he looked at her, taking in every detail he could see. She was visibly shaken, but her eyes had softened somehow. Reaching to cup her cheek, he declared. “Making you happy - it’s the thing I love the most in the world.”    
  
“Not if it means sacrificing your own happiness, Oliver.”  
  
Oliver shook his head. “I’m not sacrificing anything, okay? There hasn’t been a single moment I have pretended with you. I love what we have and I don’t want it to change.”  
  
“Things will have to change, Oliver,” she retorted. “I can’t use you like that.”  
  
“You’re not using me,” he said, stressing out the not. “I’ve been having sex with you because I wanted to. Just because we process things differently, it doesn’t mean you’re taking advantage. It’s my choice, Felicity.”  
  
A few tears slid down her face and he dried them with the back of his hand.  
  
“Did you ever tell anyone?”  
  
He shook his head in denial and then they stayed quiet for a moment before she spoke again.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me before?”  
  
Oliver considered if he should be honest, but at this point why even hide?  
  
“Because I didn’t want you to know I was damaged even before the Island.”  
  
“Oh, Oliver,” she sniffled before leaning over to throw her arms around him. It took a couple of seconds, but he quickly embraced her back. Pressing her mouth close to his ear, she said: “I can’t argue your time away screwed with your head because it did. But you’re not damaged because of it and even less for not being interested in all…the sex things. It’s part of who you are and you need to accept it. Hell, I’m pretty sure if I go on internet right now, we’ll find out there are people that share your…preference too.”  
  
Oliver smiled at her speech, turning his head to press a kiss into the curve of her neck. “Thank you,” he muttered against her skin, before pulling away from their hug to look at her.  
  
“Are we good?” he asked.  
  
She bit her lower lip, considering his question. “We will be.”  
  
And in that moment, it was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it! **Last reminder to leave comments if you enjoyed and give me kudos!**
> 
> Say hello to me @ tumblr: [ohmypreciousgirl](http://ohmypreciousgirl.tumblr.com/). You can also reblog [this fic](http://ohmypreciousgirl.tumblr.com/post/141290794117/special-thanks-to-fanmommer) over there.
> 
> See you soon, guys!


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